You know, back in the day rap lyrics were clever. Rhymes stretched vocabulary and the imagination. These days anything goes. And anything coming out of the mouths of big name hip-hoppers (or company hired producers) frequently has more to do with generating controversy and bad taste than with anything of analytical substance.

Today, many members of the Afrosphere Action Coalition and others are speaking out in unison against the increasingly reckless use of tasers. Here are some examples that illustrate the problem:
- 21-year old black man tasered nine times by Louisiana cop. Although he stopped twitching after seven, Baron Pikes was tasered to death.
- Policeman indicted in [...]

I apologize for posts coming a little slowly for the past month or so. Preparing for the big move on July 4th, Blogging While Brown and for the business conference I am attending right now has been a little distracting. Next week, we’re gonna get back into “it” full tilt, so fasten your seat belts.
In [...]

I like this video. Thought I’d share it with you.

Streaming Video by Ustream.TV
Gina has clipped video from the live stream taped during my presentation- ‘Secrets of a media insider: How to make news and make the news work for you’.
Wayne Hicks’ (Villager’s) presentation on ‘Umoja’ and black blogs follows right after.
Check out both if you have time. If you are a blogger, [...]

Have you ever done “start up”? I mean have you ever been at the very beginning of a new organization, something that required the earliest participants to take a leap of faith that others would eventually step to offer support, too? If you have, count yourself lucky. It is a powerful experience to watch over [...]

Greetings from Atlanta and the first Blogging While Brown!
I am listening to an accessible and extremely informative presentation by Angela Conyers-Benton and Markus Robinson of BlackWeb20.com. Seated on my left, also taking everything in are Pam of Pam’s House Blend, Wayne Hicks of Electronic Village and Shawn P. Williams of Dallas South blog. Last night [...]

I watched Part One. And besides not understanding why the interstitial set ups featured an…ahem…distinctively dressed black man rhyming, I thought it was a satisfactory overview of some of the issues that many black people, and Americans of all colors, are thinking about.
As in all cable and television network news programs, the show never grabbed [...]

I write about race because my love for America, for the promise of her expressed principles, compels me to do so. As I experience it, racism is America’s gangrene. There are times when affected extremities have been treated with low grade antibiotics, but collectively we have never been able to excise the rotted flesh from [...]

From My post at AOL Black Voices/BlackSpin:
I don’t live in a different world from any other American. But I experience that world as an individual, through the prism of my identity which consists of many elements including “race” as the concept has manifested in this country. As a black woman, I don’t see the world [...]

The most talented spoken word artists, or “rhymecologists,” proffer clever, vocabulary acrobatics as observations about the way we live in the world. They spit unexpected couplings, laying them down, end to end, from the beginning to the send. They lay bare naked truth for you to hear and see and feel.

The tightest lyrics provoke thought, [...]

I believe Elizabeth Hasselbeck’s tears yesterday on “The View” were sincere. I believe she seeks racial harmony in our country and so do I. Further, it’s my hunch that hundreds of thousands of people, many of them white, were nodding along as she expressed her passionate belief that the constant use of the ‘n-word’ in [...]

Yes. And Wright (pictured on the right) was prone on his stomach at the time.
According to tmz.com
Josh Brolin and Jeffrey Wright, who were arrested this past weekend at a Shreveport, La. bar, were pepper sprayed and tased by cops. And, we’re told, police went on a vulgar rant — and portions were caught on [...]

The pro-Migrant bloggers over at the The Sanctuary website are making national news by trying to do a very difficult thing: keep Obama and McCain honest about their immigration agenda. It seems that in an effort to catch the majority of the ever growing “Latino vote,” Obama and McCain are flip flopping all over themselves, [...]

I find THE cover appalling.

But, frankly, I can’t get around the pitch. Did it go like this?:
Barry Blitt, cover artist: “I have this great idea for a cover promoting that 18 page intricately detailed piece chronicling Obama’s extraordinary political skill and savvy.”
David Remnick, ‘New Yorker’ Editor: “Great! Shoot.”
Blitt: “Okay, picture the Oval Office, but [...]